Dorothea
Tanning
Dorothea Tanning, the American Surrealist turned multidisciplinary artist was a significant figure in 20th century art with her enigmatic and psychologically charged works. If you're looking for Dorothea Tanning original prints and editions for sale or would like to sell, request a complimentary valuation and browse our network's most in-demand works.
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Biography
Tanning's artistic journey began in the provincial town of Galesburg, Illinois, where she was born to Swedish immigrant parents in 1910. Nurtured by her mother's storytelling, Tanning's imagination and interest in reading developed.
In 1936, a pivotal moment occurred when Tanning visited the Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. This encounter with Surrealism ignited inspiration that would shape the early decades of her career. Tanning's work soon caught the attention of the Surrealist circle, including Max Ernst, whom she would later marry.
Throughout her career, Tanning refused to be confined by artistic movements or mediums. While her early work aligned closely with Surrealism, she continually evolved, moving through various styles and exploring different forms of expression, including sculpture and writing.
Tanning's artistic breakthrough came with her self-portrait Birthday (1942), a work that captivated the Surrealist leader André Breton. This painting, with its enigmatic depiction of a bare-breasted woman situated against endless hallways, exemplified Tanning's ability to uncannily blend the real and the imaginary, a hallmark of her early style.
In the 1950s, Tanning's work began to shift away from the precise realism of her early Surrealist paintings towards a more abstracted, gestural style. This period saw the creation of works like Insomnias (1957), where figures and forms seem to emerge and dissolve in a dreamlike flux.
The 1960s marked another significant evolution in Tanning's practice with her venture into soft sculpture. Works like Étreinte (Embrace) (1969), a writhing knot of fabric bodies, showcased her ability to translate the uncanny qualities of her paintings into three-dimensional form.
In her later years, Tanning turned to writing, publishing two memoirs, a novel, and several volumes of poetry. Her literary output, like her visual art, was marked by its exploration of the subconscious.
Throughout her long career, Tanning exhibited widely, with major retrospectives at the Centre Pompidou in Paris (1974) and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (2000). She continued to create art until her death in 2012 at the age of 101, leaving behind a diverse body of work.